by kurtdemanche | May 6, 2017 | Liberty Trilogy
So today I decided I wanted to focus my next few posts on character profiles. I’m about 1/4th of the way into the rough draft of Not With A Bang… and it’s going smashingly!
I think part of the reason is because at this point–book 3–in the trilogy I have well established characters, who we know, love or hate, and I get to mix in some totally new fresh blood to stir the pot.
Like the other books in the trilogy this one is 4 stories, different, but interlaced with each other. I want to tell you a little bit about the main character in each of those 4 stories over the next few days.
-kurt
by kurtdemanche | May 5, 2017 | Reviews
Want to give a shoutout/review to a fellow author Claudia Gray and her book Star Wars: Bloodlines.
As the giant nerd that I am, I have been reading Star Wars books since I was about 7 years old. So twenty+ years with this universe I know it about as well as anyone. Bloodlines was an outstanding read. For one with the new canon, and the myriad of questions fans have about the missing years between the movies, this gives us a glimpse of what Princess/General/Senator Leia has been up to. More than that, I actually like the politics, government, economics of the universe. I want to understand how we get to the action and war that we see in the movies. Claudia Gray does a great job of weaving plenty of action into her stories, while also giving the word the depth and attention it deserves.
I voraciously read this one in a day and a half.
Now back to writing!
-kurt
by kurtdemanche | Apr 27, 2017 | Here There Be Monsters, News
Wanted to take a minute to talk about an upcoming project… don’t ask me when this is happening, but I’m already pretty excited about the idea.
Some of my favorite books / movies are the ones that revolve around mental illness and or conditions of the psyche. The thing I think is amazing about them is that they take some that is cultural taboo to talk about openly, present it in an honest way, and help you to see the person with the condition as something more than their condition.
Examples…
Here we have movies about Body Dismorphic Disorder, Disassociative Disorder, and Under develop intelligence. Now regardless of how well you liked the movies, but if you hated I Am Sam we can’t be friends, just kidding. These movies all serve to put a face to a mental condition the average person knows very little about. There are plenty more, just wanted to point to a few.
So my idea for, Here There Be Monsters. I want to write about a child growing up in an unusual world. her/his world is all inside a compound. It’s a small universe for a child, but not an unpleasant one. They have all they need to survive, but as a child filled with natural curiosity they want to know what’s ‘outside’. As long as they can remember they have been told stories about the ‘monsters’ that live in the outside world, and the horrors that are all that is left of the world. Naturally you could wonder as a reader if the child is growing up in a post-apocalyptic world, and simply being sheltered from the devastation that lays beyond the walls of the compound. As the child grows they begin to question what they see through the cracks in the walls, and the infrequently deliveries of supplies. She/he sees monsters because that’s what they have been taught to believe, but what if the monsters are only monsters because that’s the way the adults in the compound see them, what if their minds are turning the world into the scary place they portray.
The idea would be to explore what it would look like to grow up in a compound of extreme agoraphobic adults. They see the open spaces of the world and the press of humanity as horrifying and something to protect they child from.
Right now I’m still working through the details, and how I want to explore the illness while also making it a story about child overcoming their own issues.
More to come…
-kurt
by kurtdemanche | Apr 21, 2017 | Hakomi, News
I’m excited to have the first few readers finished with Hakomi. It is a very different story from most I have done. It is a coming of age story, but with a good bit of humor, and a little more action than you expect. 
The story takes place in a variety of different places, but centers around a hiking trip across most of Arizona, and into Northern Mexico.
As a kid I lived in the Mojave desert so this part of the country holds some nostalgia for me.
One of the things I’m excited about with Hakomi is the cover art. While it doesn’t always end up being the finished piece, I like to do my own cover art during the draft/editing phase of a project. For me this a way to capture in visual what I just spent forever trying to create in words. For Hakomi the cover is going to be a weathered map with the route hand annotated.
There will be a few more clues to the journey included on the cover. Like these…
So what do Rosanne, cocaine bricks, and lizard tracks have to do with a coming of age story?
You will have to wait for Hakomi’s release to put that all together.
-kurt
by kurtdemanche | Apr 20, 2017 | 7th Age, Hakomi, Liberty Trilogy, News
Well hopefully if you have seen the site lately you will notice there was a spring cleaning. I think less is more for an author’s online home. If you wanted to hear me ramble you would just by my books or watch me line tweet something.
My plan is to hit the site with a more thorough update this summer. With that here is what I hope to deliver with the new an improved site.
- More graphic utilization in the blog / photos (Likely come cat pictures)
- Individual pages for the different projects
- Descriptions of the new projects: Hakomi, …With Justice, and Not With A Bang
- Better Amazon integration
So Kurt how’s writing going? You ask…
It’s going well, thanks for asking! I’m finishing the 3rd book in the Liberty Trilogy. by finishing I mean I am on chapter 3 of a 32-26 chapter book. My dumb day job–keep the lights on, put food on the table, pay the bills–is keeping me pretty busy. There is a fair amount of creative work happing though. My best intentions are to finish two more rough draft in 2017. Want to push 2 books off to agents for publication, and then we will be knocking on 2018’s door.
What are you going to write after the Liberty Trilogy Kurt?
It’s like you know what’s on my mind. Crazy! I will be taking a step back into my favorite writing world after book 3 in the Liberty Trilogy, doing a scifi! I started a saga The 7th Age (was just one book back then) in college. I wrote a book that I still love, but I realized later that the story really needed to start way before that book. So… I’m going to write the beginning of that saga.
-kurt
